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Label:Christian authors often sought connections between the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the events in the Gospels. The cluster of clouds beneath the angel Gabriel's feet derives from the prophet Isaiah (45:8): "Let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour . . . "

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Italian Paintings 1250-1450

The archangel Gabriel, holding a white lily and flying on clouds, approaches the Virgin, who sits outdoors on a raised ledge under a balcony that has been draped as a throne. Her arms are crossed in a gesture of humility. The dove of the Holy Spirit with a cruciform halo descends from above. A simulated pink-and-red porphyry frame with an incised inner border surrounds the image.

Gabriel's forehead is marked by the red flame that is common in depictions of angels. The lily symbolizes the selection of Mary among the Virgins of Israel, and the wreath of red and white roses on his head represents her purity. In Dante's Paradiso (23:73) she is called "the rose in which the divine word was made flesh."

Herbert Horne, in his letter to Johnson of February 28, 1912, attributed the panel to Zanobi Strozzi based on an illumination (see Florence, Museo Nazionale di San Marco, Ms. 516, folio 3 recto) in a choral book from the Dominican Observant convent of San Marco in Florence, which on the basis of documentary evidence Paolo D'Ancona (1908) had associated with a payment to Strozzi dated 1453. Two other images (see Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Ms. w.767, folios 4 verso and 5 recto; Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 457, folio 1 verso) of the Annunciation in books of hours illuminated by Strozzi use the same composition and are a further confirmation of the attribution of the Johnson painting. Despite this support, Berenson (1913) attributed the picture to Domenico di Michelino, another follower of Fra Angelico; most other writers accepted this opinion until Licia Collobi Ragghianti (1950a) correctly attributed the Annunciation to Zanobi Strozzi, suggesting that it might be the predella to the Virgin of Humility and Angels in the British royal collections.1 While it is not impossible that the Johnson Collection's painting was a predella panel, it is unlikely that it was part of the picture in England.

The iconography is unusual in that it shows Gabriel flying in on clouds. Fra Angelico, for example, who oversaw Zanobi's production of the San Marco choral books and was the greatest influence on his work, only once painted the angel in this way, in a missal that comes from San Domenico in Fiesole and probably dates to Angelico's earliest period, about 1425.2 An explanation for the unusual means of the angel's arrival is found in the text that accompanies Angelico's illumination, which comes from the introit used at mass on festivals dedicated to the Virgin, such as the Annunciation: "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour" (Isaiah 45:8).

Other features of Strozzi's picture, such as the Virgin's pose, can be found in the Annunciation of the reliquary that Angelico painted for the convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence around 1434,3 where the angel wears the same distinctive pink costume decorated with tufts of gold thread. Carl Brandon Strehlke, from Italian paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 400-402.

* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit.